Cineworld reveals cinema closures as part of restructuring plan

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Cineworld has confirmed six cinemas will close as part of plans to cut jobs and save money, as the company struggles with debt.

The cinemas will shut in “late September 2024” if the cost-cutting plans get legal approval.

They are:

• Glasgow Parkhead;

• Bedford;

• Hinckley;

• Loughborough;

• Yate;

• Swindon – Regent Circus.

A statement on Saturday described them as “commercially unviable”.

It said: “Against a background of increasingly high and unsustainable operating costs, the business is set to implement a restructuring plan that will enable it to address its lease portfolio and rental terms with landlords in the UK.”

The chain hopes it will “return our business to profitability” and “ensure a sustainable long-term future for Cineworld in the UK”, it added.

Staff at cinemas earmarked for closure will be “offered redeployment at nearby sites” as far as possible and sites abandoned by the chain taken over by rivals.

The statement added “the total number of impacted sites cannot be confirmed until the process is complete”.

Sky News reported on Thursday that the restructuring plan could see 25 UK cinemas close their doors.

The company stressed that “a restructuring plan is not bankruptcy – but a legal process”, which will allow it to make efficiencies to become profitable again.

Its cinemas outside the UK are unaffected.

Billions of debt led to bankruptcy protection

Cineworld currently operates more than 100 sites in Britain, including at the Picturehouse chain, and employs thousands of people, although its public relations adviser has refused to confirm either figure.

It grew under the leadership of the Greidinger family into a global giant of the industry, acquiring chains including Regal in the US in 2018 and the British company of the same name four years earlier.

Its multibillion-dollar debt mountain led it into crisis, though, and forced the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2022.

It delisted from the London Stock Exchange last August, having seen its share price collapse amid fears for its survival.

Under the deal struck last year, several billion dollars of debt were exchanged for shares, with a significant sum of new money injected into the company by a group of hedge funds and other investors.

After emerging from bankruptcy protection, it appointed a new leadership team, installing Eduardo Acuna, who ran Mexican cinema chain Cinepolis’s operations in the Americas, as its chief executive.

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